


Two Worlds

by Sharksdontsleep



Category: 18th & 19th Century CE RPF, American Revolution RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Sleepy Hollow Fusion, Astral Projection, Background Character Death, Background Relationships, Blood Magic, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Kissing, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Suicidal Thoughts, Were-Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 05:39:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6182636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharksdontsleep/pseuds/Sharksdontsleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Finish the incantation!" he yells, as he and Hamilton run through the woods. They may outrun one of the beasts, but not all of them. Blades do not work to kill them - Lafayette knows because Lafayette has <i>tried</i>. Blades don’t work, neither does gunpowder or consecrated iron or fire or holy water or cursing loudly at them in English, French, and the little Prussian he’s picked up from the Baron.</p><p>Lafayette - and magic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Worlds

**Author's Note:**

> Many many thanks to Poose for the hand-holding and telling me to write a real ending. This borrows elements from the Sleepy Hollow episode about Lafayette, and from RL Lafayette's real adventures, which include wolf hunting and falling on his face in court. 
> 
> I've tried to tag for anything relevant, but please let me know if you'd like additional warnings. I can be reached at dontsleepsharks at [tumblr](http://dontsleepsharks.tumblr.com/) and gmail. Feedback always appreciated!

They call him 'the hero of two worlds.' Little do they know.

"Finish the incantation!" he yells, as he and Hamilton run through the woods. They may outrun one of the beasts, but not all of them. Blades do not work to kill them - Lafayette knows because Lafayette has _tried_. Blades don’t work, neither does gunpowder or consecrated iron or fire or holy water or cursing loudly at them in English, French, and the little Prussian he’s picked up from the Baron.

Hamilton is here at his invitation - the British left him little choice. He had had to recruit someone for whom words were as much a weapon as muskets, though Washington had gone a little pale when Lafayette had suggested it. “I cannot stop you from putting yourself in harm’s way, but the country cannot afford to lose you both,” he says. “ _I_ cannot afford to lose you both.”

"I promise to return the Lieutenant Colonel in one piece, and as human as when he left here," Lafayette says.

Washington does not seem to believe him. When they part, he gives Lafayette a kiss on each cheek. “Good luck, son, and good hunting,” he says. “The war depends on you.”

Hamilton, for his part, had taken to shouting out Latin phrasings while fleeing from supernatural creatures like a duck to water.

"Let slip the dogs of war, indeed," Hamilton shouts, book clutched in one hand. He mutters out something else and glowing sigils, twisted as snakes, appear on the trees around them.

In their glow, Lafayette can see paw prints too big to belong to any dog crisscrossing the wet dirt of the forest. They were on the beasts' hunting ground and, armed as they might be, were decidedly the hunted and not the hunters.

They run through the forest. Lafayette's shirt - a coarse hunting shirt he'd acquired from one of the enlisted men - catches on branches, which seem to reach out like grasping hands. There are devils in these woods, it's said, beyond the beasts the British have summoned. Devils and witches and things entirely new to him. It's cold enough that his sweat sticks to his skin, that each breath produces a cloud of mist. The night air cuts into his lungs, but he is grateful for the clarity it brings.

They keep moving. In the distance, the beasts howl, a sound not entirely lupine, an undertone to it like a child crying or a woman screaming, hell’s hounds coming to collect wayward souls. Lafayette does not wish to be such a soul. 

They come to a copse of birch trees, peeling bark ghostly in the moonlight. "Will this work?" Lafayette asks.

"Yes," Hamilton says. "Here. Here's good." He walks in a tight circle, inspecting each tree. "Here will do."

 

Ten years prior, and Lafayette searches in a different set of woods for a different creature.

Most boys, upon hearing about a fantastic beast in the forest near their home, of course want to grab whatever implement they have handy - a wooden sword, a toy musket - and charge off to find it. Most boys have parents to set a strong hand on their shoulder and say, 'No, child, remain here until it is safe.'

Lafayette is not most boys.

He's heard the stories, of course. Fairy stories about the dangers in the woods, the long-fingered elves that come to steal children away in the night; the witches with their houses made of sugared treats or bones; the white gleaming teeth of the devil's own creations. The stories children tell each other and then giggle over their own fright. The stories grown-ups tell them to warn them, to keep them whole. There are things in the dark, child, things that will eat you up. Stay inside, stay with me, stay safe. 

News of the beast begins as rumors, whispers among the servants, idle talk overheard as the maids scrub the wash or the cooks prepare the day's bread. A beast - part man, part monster - that prowls the woods under the bright circle of the moon. A wolf with formidable teeth and an immense tail. The stuff of legends. 

The king calls for a hunting party, a band of sturdy men to bring the beast or beasts to bay. Lafayette longs to be in their numbers. 

His grandmother laughs at him, and again when he stamps his foot, impudent. “You have a lion’s heart,” she says. “And a lion’s foolishness.” 

“I shall have the wolf’s head,” he declares.

“Oh, my darling boy,” she says, looking suddenly sad. “You are so much like your father.” She motions for him, and he draws into her lap, even though he is too old for it. She pets his hair, always tangled, coming free from the neat rows she plaits into it, and absently picks out a briar. “If you are so keen to go into the woods, my little lion,” she says. “Do not tell anyone you meet your true name.”

“I have many names,” he says. 

Her hand pauses in his hair. “Yes, my darling. You have many names, every saint a protection.”

“In war,” he says. “Mama says they are to protect me in battle, the way Achilles was protected by the River Styx. Only I am to survive.”

She hugs him closer, and he breathes the warm papery smell of her, feels the weight of her mourning jewelry against him. She wears a pin for his father, and one for his grandfather, death’s heads carved in ivory. “There are fights beyond the battlefield,” she says. “Villains beyond enemy soldiers. Your true name is a powerful thing, not to be given away lightly. Protect it, and it shall protect you.” 

 

Hamilton begins chanting, at first cradling the book and then holding it so close to his nose that Lafayette isn't sure how he's distinguishing between the letters. Shadows pass across his face, the impressions of words moving the way clouds cast their shadows on the ground. Bright lines like lightening strikes appear around them, crackling with the smell that precedes a storm. Hamilton's eyes go completely white.

"Alexander," Lafayette says, moving toward him, arm outstretched to - he doesn't know if breaking the spell now will trap Hamilton somehow in this state. 

They're in a cage of light now, any hope of remaining inconspicuous to the British scouts long since abandoned. Hamilton's voice does not sound like his own, abraded and rough, each word a rasp. 

Lafayette’s own schooling was heavy on tactics, maneuvers, riding, the proper way to conduct one’s self in battle. He’d had enough Latin to read the Romans, to make his way through Augustine and Aquinas. He’d won awards, academic honors that seemed to alienate him even more from other courtiers. Still, even his talents did not match Hamilton’s easy facility with languages, not enough to decipher what he’s saying now.

More sigils appear, and the forest looks ablaze. The beasts are closer, prowling, pacing in circles around the cage of light Hamilton has built.

Lafayette draws his sword, freshly blessed and dipped in holy water. It won’t kill them, but it might delay them enough for Hamilton to -

Hamilton himself is aglow now, lit from within like a hurricane lamp, his thin frame an unconsumed candle. Ink scrawlings begin to appear on him, moving like tattoos under his skin, verses in Latin and Greek and languages Lafayette doesn’t recognize. 

One of the beasts is at their stand of trees, breath like smoke, pawing at the cage. Light zaps out, arcing, and the beast rears back. 

Closer, it is bristly as a boar, hairs spiking up. It’s close enough that Lafayette can smell the sulphurous odors of its breath, hear its low growls. They’re separated only by the bars of light Hamilton has conjured, and as indefatigable as Hamilton is, Lafayette wonders how long he can maintain this barrier. 

Outside, another beast joins the first, then another. They circle, following each other, coordinated, rumbling enough to send vibrations through the ground. 

The cage of light around Hamilton and Lafayette falters, enough that a gap opens, a passageway large enough for one of the beasts to fit through. It leaps, teeth glistening, its maw pouring smoke and brimstone, and Lafayette readies his sword. 

 

Even then they call her ‘that Austrian woman,’ ‘the child queen,’ in whispers, ‘the devil’s daughter.’ She is beautiful, they say, and profligate and unchaste, loyal to her home country, wicked and conniving.

Some say she is worse than that, even, a fairy queen who craves only France’s gold, who kidnaps young courtiers back to lands and returns them as old men, bent and hollowed. 

She is young when he meets her, not yet 20, lovely beyond the telling of it, beguiling, bewitching - and cruel.

She laughs at his bumbling country manners, his awkwardness at dancing, feet unaccustomed to slick-bottomed shoes. He feels at home astride a horse, or on a gambol through the woods, or on a field of battle were there to be a war, but not here, on a different sort of field, floors that gleam like mirrors and women as ornate as the chandeliers that sparkle above them. 

“You are handsome enough,” she says, as they dance, eyes moving over him in appraisal. She does not clarify what, exactly, he is handsome enough for. 

He does not meet her eyes - she is the _queen_ after all, resplendent, ethereal, and he cannot separate the fear he feels at embarrassing himself from the fear that she might be what they say she is, that her mean smile might pull back farther to reveal another set of teeth. 

He steps on her toes instead. 

She makes a show of not making a show of it, tiny foot darting away from his, moving smoothly on the floor when he moves like a bumpkin, a rube. She giggles, hand covering her mouth in a practiced ladylike titter. 

He flushes red, cheeks burning with shame and relief, and she turns him loose like a fisherman releasing an inadequate catch, laughter following him as he returns to the perimeter of the dance floor. 

Later, stories of his humiliation come back to him, from his father-in-law impressing upon him the importance of courtly conduct, from the servants who laugh at him when they think he cannot hear, from Adrienne when he has stolen into her chambers. 

“You are handsome enough,” she says, a little teasing. He has lost his sleep shirt, and she passes a hand down his chest. 

“I cannot dance,” he says, gasping when her hand goes lower. “I am useless at such niceties.”

She laughs, her voice free from any kind of cruelty, sweet and clear as a church bell. “You cannot dance standing up,” she says. “But there are other steps to master.” 

She spirits him away to a different sort of land, one he returns from only later when he comes back to himself, sweaty and sated, Adrienne grinning beside him. 

“You do not mind my country manners, then?” he asks, turning to her.

“You will do,” she says, and kisses him on the nose. 

 

The beast leaps forward, springing off its back legs, teeth gnashing. Lafayette sidesteps, blade bouncing off its belly, ineffective as a child’s toy. “Hamilton!” he yells. 

Hamilton gives no response or even sign that he can hear Lafayette. 

Up close, the beast is even larger than Lafayette had appreciated, a great snarling thing, a chimera of wolf and boar and snake, its feet scaled and clawed. 

“Hamilton!” Lafayette says again. “Alexander!” No response comes.

The beast roars, breath hot and stinking. 

Lafayette fumbles for his knife, something, anything that could deter it or delay it. He’s held it any number of times, in battle, hunting, and yet it feels foreign in his hands, his grasp clumsy. He cuts himself, a knick at the base of his thumb, slick enough that he loses his grip. The knife falls to the ground. 

The beast lunges, two paws on his shoulders, knocking him down, the wind out of him. It snaps at him, and he can hear the strength of its jaws. He twists away, hand groping over the ground for his knife. He can’t reach it, fingers inches away, but its handle lies out of his reach. 

The beast bites at him again, teeth just missing his throat. 

He throws his arm up, desperate to shield his neck. He prays, to every saint he’s named for, for some kind of intercession, the ghost of his father, felled by British cannons, the blessed Virgin in her midnight robes. 

Instead, intervention comes as Hamilton clasps his hand. His eyes are still whited over, and he’s chanting something that Lafayette cannot hear over the beast’s growls. Light emanates from their combined grip, radiating out in a sudden burst, leaving after-images dazzling on his vision. 

His chest is suddenly lighter, the weight of the beast - the beast itself - gone. He sits up, and the cage of light is also gone from around them, only char marks left on the trees and -

“They’re gone,” he says, wondering. 

Hamilton’s grip has gone slack in his and when he looks over, Hamilton has collapsed, eyes shut, mouth open, skin pale. He does not respond, not when Lafayette taps him, softly and then harder when Hamilton remains mute. 

He peels back an eyelid to find Hamilton’s eye milky and opaque. His jaw is slack and he’s drained somehow, vacant, absent the _life_ that makes Hamilton Hamilton. His hand is covered in blood, not from Lafayette’s own wound, but a deeper slash, perhaps sustained in his fight with the beast, still bleeding sluggishly. 

Lafayette leaves the book - it is too large to carry, along with Hamilton - in the stand of birch trees, under a rock and buried as deep as he can digging with the hilt of his knife. 

He walks, Hamilton light in his arms, lighter than he should be, as if the trance has removed some of his substance and left only a husk. He’s breathing, gratifyingly warm breaths that Lafayette can feel through the thin material of his shirt, and for now he’s grateful for every expansion of Hamilton’s ribs, for the steady beat of his heart through his breastbone. 

Hamilton’s bound hand rests against the open placket of his shirt, blood already beginning to rust at the edges of the bandage. His eyes are shut, lids fluttering as if dreaming, reminding Lafayette of the way dogs sleep, paws moving in the motions of the hunt. 

It’s a long slow walk, and as light as Hamilton seems, he quickly becomes burdensome. Lafayette shifts his position to give his arms some relief, but it is apparent this will not work for the miles he has to go to their rendezvous point, so he hefts Hamilton over his shoulders, the way he would carry freshly hunted game, and looks only at the ground ahead of him. As he walks, he imagines their arrival at camp, Washington's grief and disappointment. Laurens’. His own.

By the time he reaches the rendezvous, he is drenched in sweat and huffing from effort, shirt sticking to his body. A set of horses awaits them, one of the forward scouts, a beardless youth (or, Lafayette suspects, a woman masquerading as such) with a high reedy voice. 

He kneels and deposits Hamilton as gently as he can on the grass border between road and forest. “We’ll only need one horse,” he says, panting. 

He swishes his mouth with a canteen the scout has brought, spitting the first sip of it out, then chugs the rest, wiping his mouth with his arm. He tips the second canteen onto a rag, wetting it, and then draws it across Hamilton’s lips, which are dry and cracked from the cold. 

“Is he injured, sir?” the scout asks.

“Yes,” Lafayette says. “Not mortally, I hope. There is a book, in the forest. Several miles due east, in a stand of -” He does not know the English word, so says ‘bouleaux,’ instead. “White trees. With bark that comes off like so.” He mimes the peel of its bark. “The book is under a stone. Ride now, ride hard. If you are intercepted, set the book ablaze. We will return to camp.” 

The scout mounts her horse, riding off in a clatter of hooves. 

Lafayette takes in a lungful of air, breathing it out in almost a whistle. He maneuvers Hamilton onto the saddle, himself after, controlling the reins one-handed and securing Hamilton with the other. 

Laurens meets them at the edge of camp. “He’s - a spell,” Lafayette says. “We must bring him to the General.” 

Together, they carry Hamilton, arm draped over each of their shoulders, feet trailing on the ground. To others at camp, it must appear that he’s had too much to drink, a gentleman’s overindulgence and nothing more. 

Inside the General’s tent, they lay Hamilton on a cot. The journey has done nothing to change his condition, and his arms hang limp at his sides, his hair loose from its ties.

“There were beasts, sir,” Lafayette says. “Hamilton did something -” and he looks down at his hand for the first time, the cut there, then at Hamilton’s own bandaged hand. He peels off the linens, slowly, then more quickly, until he finds Hamilton’s palm, examining the cut there. 

Now that the blood has dried, he sees that the cut is more even, more deliberate than he’d previously thought, not the act of a rampaging beast, but something Hamilton had inflicted. 

“Blood magic,” Washington says, despairingly. He cradles Hamilton’s hand in his own larger one. “The fool.” 

“He banished them - one was at my throat, sir,” Lafayette says. “He _saved_ me.”

“And in doing so, may have banished himself from this Earth. It is a plunge in a river that few can swim.” Washington sets Hamilton’s hand atop his chest, rising to as full height as he can in the low ceiling of the tent. “Laurens, I will need a few things. Candles. Remains from supper, the chicken bones if they’ve not gone to the dogs already. Lafayette’s rosary. Bring them quickly.”

“My rosary, sir?” Lafayette asks, when Laurens has gone. 

“You are his chance to return,” Washington says. “I will need your prayers and your blood.”

“Of course,” Lafayette says.

“And one more thing.”

“Anything,” Lafayette says. He is ready for whatever trial Washington prescribes, any injury a small concession compared to what Hamilton has done for him. “I owe Hamilton my life. Anything, sir.”

Washington looks at him, shadows under his eyes. “You boys, so quick to danger. There are sacrifices other than blood.” He shakes his head. “When the time comes - when Laurens returns, when the ritual begins - there will be a time when I will need your name.” 

“My name, sir?”

“Every saint and martyr,” Washington says. “You will be known to the spirits. They can exact a difficult price. One beyond death.”

Lafayette squares his shoulders. “I am prepared, sir.”

Washington sighs. “I am quite certain, son, that you are not.”

Laurens returns, carrying a set of sturdy candles that Washington relieves him of. He unwinds Lafayette’s rosary from where it’s looped around one hand. Out of his waistcoat, he removes a handkerchief, unfolding it to reveal a set of small bones. Lastly, he reaches into another pocket and pulls from it a flask, which he hands to Lafayette. “You’ll need this, I think,” he says, and Lafayette takes a long drink of it.

Washington lights the candles and clears off a table, laying out a book bound shut by a heavy lock, the handful of bones, a map, and a knife. “We will need to act quickly or else Hamilton will be lost.” He gestures for Lafayette with an outstretched hand. “Laurens,” he says. “Alert the medic. We may require his services.”

Closer, the map is of no place Lafayette recognizes. It’s in Washington’s hand; even as commander in chief, Washington’s retains his surveyor's eye for landscape. There are mountains, ripples inset within ripples; fine dots showing wetland swamp; a river that winds like a snake across the page. He’s marked tiny trees, dense forests ending in broad grasslands and an ocean bordering this strange continent on three sides. 

Washington notices his examination of the map. “It is a place few visit, and even fewer return from,” he says. He picks up the knife and, without ceremony, draws it across his palm, a shallow red slash. Squeezing his hand, he drips blood over the map, dotting a course along the outline of a river. “We will be bound together, you and I, much as you and Hamilton are. Bound by blood. And by things deeper than blood.”

Lafayette inhales deeply, preparing himself for this impossible journey. For whatever task Washington asks of him. “I will do what is necessary. I trust your hand will guide me now, as you do in all things.”

“Son,” Washington says. “I will do all I can to ensure your safe return.” He sounds - not unsure, for Washington is steady in all things. But certain, somehow, the resigned certainty of a commander sending his men into battle, knowing some will come back with their shields and some on them. 

“I know you will,” Lafayette says. 

On the map, Washington’s blood has coalesced together, making a river that seems to flow across the page. He hands Lafayette the knife. “A cut similar to this one should suffice. Once you are on your voyage, I will remain here as your anchor.” 

He hands Lafayette the knife, nodding approvingly as Lafayette draws the tip across his palm. He guides Lafayette’s hand over the map, broad palm encasing Lafayette’s hand. Their blood comingles, the river on the map wending its way to the sea. 

“Return Hamilton to me, son,” he says. “Return to me.” He presses a thumb against Lafayette's forehead and begins a quiet recitation. “Marie-Joseph,” he says. “Marie-Joseph Paul …”

And the world around Lafayette goes dark. 

 

America is a buggy swamp. America is terrible. Americans are unpretentious, forward, loud, unwedded to tradition, backwards, and rough. America is wonderful. Lafayette’s party caravans through the Carolinas, and into Virginia, Maryland, and finally Pennsylvania, a journey almost as long as their one at sea. 

Along the way, he sees the tidewater, its plantations rich in rice and indigo and cruelty; the dense maple and beech forests of Virginia, leaf-litter bright with salamanders; the rollicking Maryland ports, the austere Quaker farms. 

By the time they arrive in Philadelphia, they are bug-bitten, unwashed, and miserable from the heat. Lafayette is practically vibrating as he descends from his horse to meet Washington, who accepts his two-kiss greeting grudgingly and gives them a polite, if somewhat distant, reception. 

Washington is exactly as Lafayette imagined him: Tall, handsome, weathered, intimidating without being imperious, fatherly without seeming old. Vigorous. Elegant in his military regalia, but without the soft hands of a parade officer. 

Lafayette wants nothing more than to fight alongside this man, to gain his acceptance and approval, to take up the banner for his glorious cause.

Instead, he is told to wait. 

European peace, it seems, has brought many glory-hounds across the ocean to Philadelphia, and in the first days in Washington’s camp, Lafayette sees them parade like fancy cockerels, instructing the Continentals on this or that. As if fighting here will be some gentleman’s contest on a wide field and not a hunter’s game in the woods.

They call him ‘the boy’ to distinguish him from all the other would-be generals. ‘The boy,’ as if in not saying his name they can diminish his enthusiasm. He agrees to fight without a command, for no pay - the Continentals are almost naked, by French standards, in thin hunting shirts and barely enough shoes to keep their feet off the ground. 

The other Frenchmen try to drill this ragtag group in field tactics when it’s clear they need food, gunpowder, bandages, clothing, hope. 

Hope and consecrated iron. 

The British waste little time in activating all of the weapons at their disposal. Lafayette can hear them at night, stalking around their headquarters. Philadelphia, for all the Americans claim it as a city, is surrounded by the woods that give Pennsylvania its name. It is a new country to Lafayette, and yet, in many ways, all forests are the same, the dark rich smell of earth, the watching eyes of things in the night. Their teeth and jaws.

There are devils in these woods, cryptids unknown to natural philosophers, some with leathery wings like bats, devils that command the long pine snakes thick as a man’s arm. 

Some men in the camp say the trees themselves come to life, moving like Macbeth’s forest, enough to ensnare and consume men. Some men say such talk is foolishness, that woods are woods and trees are trees, and the British no more formidable than their artillery and naval prowess. 

Bog iron is brought from the New Jersey pine barrens, crude, ugly stuff that the Americans forge into cannons. 

Washington finds him in an armory, reciting obscure blessings his grand-mere taught him, a rosary in one hand. “You’ve heard them, then,” Washington says. It’s not a question.

“Yes, sir. At night.”

“When the men ask, I tell them it is wind in the chimneys,” Washington says. He looks weary, bags under his eyes, though they have a long fight ahead of them.

“The wind does not have glowing eyes, sir,” he says.

Washington nods, looking at Lafayette like he’s seeing him for the first time. “You’ve fought such devils in France? I did not think there was room for such wildness on the Continent. Too many courtiers, too many manners.”

“I grew up in the country, sir. On a farm near the woods. We had all manner of game.”

“Indeed,” Washington says, pressing his lips together contemplatively. He motions to Lafayette’s rosary. “Finish your blessings, son.”

“You do not mind the words of a papist over your cannons?” Lafayette asks, though he grips the beads even tighter at Washington’s address. _Son_ , he thinks, and his heart seems to swell in his chest. 

Washington laughs, a deep expansive laugh. “As they say, we need all the help we can get.”

 

He walks for a long time - or perhaps an instant - in the strange world Washington sends him to. Time here is like in a dream, too slippery to grasp, and Lafayette does not try. There are mountains, it seems, high peaks purple in the half-light, mountains and deep ravines, riparian forest and a rain-shadow desert. 

He has no maps, no guide, only the inexplicable tug in his gut toward a place, one that he knows must be right. He does not hunger or thirst, though his feet ache with his efforts, and when he pulls his boots off to cool them in a stream, little silvery fish surround them, playfully darting around his ankles. It tickles, and he laughs with it. 

Clouds roll in, thunder accompanying like Hephaestus’ anvil, rain too, and he shelters in a cave, watching as a curtain of water falls across its entrance. He does not tire, but feels he should sleep somehow, making a pillow from his jacket on a soft bed of moss. He wonders if, in dreaming, he will return to the realm of the men or fall deeper into this world, another layer below, that he stands in the threshold between the mundane and magical, that the force of a raindrop will tip him in either direction. 

Instead, he sleeps and sees only the darkness behind his eyelids. 

More walking, this time onto a high alpine peak, mountain top dotted with snow, a bracing wind reddening his cheeks. Little furred creatures run before him among blue flowers, chirping their greetings to one another, and there’s a strange pinkish cast to the snow, as if it is somehow lives too. 

He descends from the mountain, following switchbacks on a trail, down into forest, and then into scrubland, strange dry plants there that make his eyes water. Another rise, and he is closer now, whatever tether leading him to Hamilton stronger, a thread thickening into a cable. 

He runs the last mile, heart against his ribs, growing breathless with the thin air. He finds a cave, wider than the one that sheltered him, a slim passageway from trail to its mouth, slick rocks that he turns an ankle on. He ignores the pain, and scrambles the last few steps into the cave’s entrance. 

It’s dark inside, this realm’s half-light not reaching past the doorway, and his eyes take a minute to adjust. Inside, there’s a glow, some kind of phosphorescence, like a set of fireflies has alighted on a wall. It gives everything a ghostly cast, and he can make out dripping stalactites, the uneven stone floor, the iridescent fungi that are giving the cave its light. There’s the distant sound of wings, bats, perhaps, something fluttering in the darkness beyond where he can see. He scans it - the must be the place, it must be, every molecule within him saying, ‘yes, _here_ , yes,’ but there’s no sign of Hamilton, nothing to tell him that the cave is anything else than one of the hundred such indentations in this seemingly endless landscape and yet -

“You came,” a voice comes from the darkness. Hamilton’s voice. “You _came_ ,” and this time it is closer to a cry, something stripped and bare and desperate. 

“Of course, Ham,” Lafayette says, and he walks further into the cave, into a place where the shadows make it almost impenetrably dark. 

Hamilton sits on the cave’s floor, back against one of the walls. His hair hangs in strings around his face. When he looks up, his eyes are big and wet and beautifully brown, no sign of the magic clouding them back on Earth. 

Lafayette kneels down to where Hamilton is sitting and kisses him, once on each cheek, and then another longer kiss on the center of his forehead. “Of course I came for you,” he says. The tears in Hamilton’s eyes threaten to spill over, and Hamilton buries his face in his hands, a sob wracking through his body.

“I thought I was in hell,” he says, voice muffled by his hands. 

“No,” Lafayette says. Trust Hamilton to confuse idleness and damnation. “Not hell. Just not Earth.”

Another sob, and Lafayette wraps his arms around him, letting him cry into his neckcloth and shirt. They remain like that until Lafayette’s knees start to complain at being on the hard cave floor, and he rocks back a little to sit on his heels. 

At that, Hamilton turns away, running his hands over his face. 

Lafayette pats down his coat, looking for a handkerchief or even a rag not saturated with gun oil, and finds neither. 

It doesn’t matter, because when Hamilton turns to face him he has a third eye, this one unblinking and lighter than the other two, lens dimmed as if with cataract. 

“Hamilton -” Lafayette says, and brings his hand up to touch his own forehead in the spot corresponding to Hamilton’s new eye. In the spot where Lafayette had kissed him. 

Hamilton brings his hand up and hovers the pad of his middle finger over it. “I can -” he says. “Huh. That’s - that’s something.” He faces Lafayette more directly. “You have. At your shoulder. All around you. Do you not see?”

Lafayette turns in a circle, almost comically, to find nothing there. “What is it, Ham?”

“You can’t see it?” Hamilton asks. “No, no, of course, you wouldn’t be able to. We need to find a mirror. Or a pond maybe. A reflective surface of some sort -”

“We need to get back to the land of the living,” Lafayette says.

Hamilton shakes his head, as if to remind himself of their current situation. “I don’t think this is real, for what it’s worth,” he says, pointing to his face. “It’s some manifestation, some artifact of my confinement here. A price, perhaps, for having lingered so long.”

“Why do you say that?” 

“Because I can see -” Hamilton brushes himself off, moving toward Lafayette and squaring his shoulders as if preparing himself for a hard ride and not a journey back through whatever celestial highway brought Lafayette here. 

He clasps Lafayette’s hand in his, and Lafayette can feel the tug of the physical world making itself known, like a hook into his navel, drawing him back to the earthly realm.“Because I can see _death_ ,” he says, and the world goes dark around them.

 

They wake on the same pallet, moved from where he had begun his vigil, either by their journey or some member of the family. It’s light out, sun streaming through a thinly curtained window, and Lafayette’s mouth is dry from sleep. He doesn’t know how many hours - or days - they’ve been there. 

Hamilton is tucked under his arm, secure against him and snoring lightly. Lafayette pushes Hamilton’s hair back from his forehead revealing nothing but skin, no sign of the eye, if it even ever existed.

At his touch, Hamilton wakes, eyes opening to reveal their normal brown color.

Lafayette lets out a whoop of joy, and propels Hamilton up to kiss him, once on each cheek, then again, then once, smackingly, on the mouth. “You have returned,” Lafayette says. 

“You have returned me,” Hamilton says, and presses an answering kiss to Lafayette’s cheek. 

Washington finds them, Washington, and Laurens bearing what looks to be half the camp’s rations, which he places on the table beside their bed. 

“You were asleep for two days,” he says. His face looks pinched and careworn, eyes red around the rims.

Washington looks similarly troubled, though he guards it better than Laurens, at least, patting Hamilton on the shoulder, not pulling back when Lafayette squeezes his hand in greeting.

“It’s been a hard week, son,” he says, and Lafayette cannot tell which of them he’s addressing or both, but Washington’s broad hand remains in his own, and he feels grounded, real and whole, for the first time since they went into the woods.

“Our scouts say the British have ceded the area north of the city,” Washington says. “Temporarily at least. But there is time to catch you up on what you have missed after your strength has returned. Please eat. I expect you’ll want to take some time to refresh yourselves before hearing the day’s news.”

He turns to leave then, and holds the door open for Laurens to follow. “I -” Laurens says, looking back at Hamilton, who has gone from looking joyful to morose, face pale under days of stubble. “Yes, sir.” 

“Ham, are you - what’s the matter?” Lafayette asks, as they listen to Washington’s heavy footfalls and Laurens’ quieter ones in the hallway. 

“I thought I had dreamt it,” he says, and his voice sounds distant, hollow even. “Imagined it. A vision, a hallucination. Some product of the fever dream you rescued me from.”

“Alexander,” Lafayette says, trying to keep his words soft, tender even. “You’re not making sense.”

Hamilton turns toward him and looks at him, _through_ him almost. “You will live a long life,” he says. “John will not.”

“How do you -” 

“The eye,” Hamilton says, pressing a thumb to a spot on his forehead. “It may not be there, but it is still _there_. I can see - we don’t have much time. Or, I don’t.” He glances down at himself. “Twenty years, perhaps a few more. Not enough. And John - I need to see him. We need to -”

He rises, legs moving weakly from his days abed, and immediately crumples to the floor. Lafayette steps down, wincing a bit at the floor’s chill, and offers Hamilton a hand, and then a shoulder when Hamilton begins to rise on unsteady feet. “Come,” Lafayette says. “That is the hunger talking. You’re exhausted.”

“You have a light around you,” Hamilton says. “Bright, vigorous. Washington’s is similar, though he is older yet. Like a great candle half-spent.” 

“And Laurens?” Lafayette deposits him back on the pallet, both of them gasping with even this mild effort. There’s a jug of cider that Laurens had brought, cold enough that water has condensed on it. Lafayette sloshes some into a cup, then takes a swig, and then another. 

“His candle is briefer,” Hamilton says, taking the refilled cup Lafayette offers. “He has your gift for battle, but perhaps not for survival.”

“You should not tell him,” Lafayette says. 

“You think me capable of such a cruelty, especially towards a friend I hold as dear as John? No. I will not tell him. I could not.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. 

“Are you sure it is some specter of death and not some after-effect of the spell?”

Hamilton nods, decisive. “I do not know how I know only that I know. I am certain, however, as certain as I am of my name.” He takes a deep inhale, then motions to the food sitting on the side table. “We have spent too much time idling here,” he says, as if he had been lazing about rather than trapped in a strange trance. “Let’s eat and then go see what work his Excellency has for us.”

“You should rest,” Lafayette says, though he knows such words will be lost on Hamilton, who has scrambled over and is rapidly shoveling food into his mouth.

“No time,” he says. “Never enough time.” 

 

It begins after the war. His dreams are vivid now, dreams of war, artillery thundering, musket-balls whizzing by. He finds little charming in their sound. 

In some dreams, he has come untethered from his body, wandering the strange land that he recovered Hamilton from, walking and walking without destination, until his boots slosh with blood, until he grows weak and skeletal. 

In others, he is in prison, confined to a doorless, windowless cell; or he must take that final Redoubt again and again, only to be shot in the stomach, left to bleed by his fellow soldiers. 

In one, he is imprisoned in the body of a redcoat, voice flat and unfamiliar in his mouth, wearing another man’s face. Washington himself oversees his hanging. His death is dishonorable, and they bury him in an hasty grave, Washington absent from his funeral. 

The visions do not confine themselves to nighttime, but creep upon him in the day, robbing him of his stomach and the pleasures of family life. Adrienne takes the children from him to her mother’s, at first claiming that he needs his rest, then more frequently. He does not begrudge her this; he understands the merits of a tactical retreat. 

“They call it ‘homesickness,’ darling,” she says. “They say that a soldier’s heart longs for battlefield in peacetime, and for home in times of war.” 

He fears it is something more sinister. 

There are whispers, sounds like wind in the chimney, though it is stifling and hot in the city, summer come early and sudden, exacerbated by midden piles in the streets, the growing threat of cholera. Wind or something that speaks with the wind’s voice. 

At first, it is only whispers, half-words, enough to make the hairs on his neck rise - and then it is more than words, the sound of his name. He is called, by his mother and grandmother; by Adrienne, though she has long gone to the country; by Washington and Hamilton, as if from across the sea.

He ignores it. He concentrates on ignoring it, enough that it becomes his only thought. Days slide past as he sequesters himself from the sounds, the servants drawing heavy curtains, though his rooms are roasting. 

Dreams come then, though he cannot tell if he sleeps or wakes. He arises one morning, feeling hale and clear-headed, only to have patterns in the carpet shift below his feet, the walls buckle in around him. 

He wakes again, and again, and again, from within the same dream, until he does not know the difference between waking and sleep, between this world or the other. Lafayette had been willing to give his blood and his money to the Revolution, but it seems the price of victory will be his sanity. 

Help comes in the form of a letter. Or, rather, a letter containing a map. It’s from Washington and it’s - it’s different from their wartime correspondence. Colder, somehow. During the war, Washington hadn’t been sentimental in person - paternal, sure, reassuring, steady. But his letters - Lafayette has them tucked away like they were love notes, bound in a ribbon at the bottom of a trunk. In them, Washington was kind, effusive, almost sweet. 

This letter is nothing like that. It’s cold, almost, formal, as if Washington is addressing a stranger, and Lafayette reads it in puzzlement. He’s weary enough that the words seem to crawl like spiders over the page, and he struggles to read it, his English rusty. 

It’s not until he reviews it for the third time, this time in the light streaming in from the window, that he sees. A few words in ink a shade paler than the surrounding words. Lafayette had been, at best, a poor speller in English, but Washington never had. And yet, there are words misspelled, verbs seemingly in the wrong tense, though it’s hard for him to discern. A description of a meeting between Washington, Lafayette, and Gates that never happened.

It’s a code, and he’s careful to note each discrepancy, to note the words, the letters, the numbers of letters. Coordinates. Washington, ever the mapmaker.

He clears his desk, setting papers fluttering to the floor, pulls open the curtains to let the brightness of day in. Dust motes float in the shaft of light, the air in his rooms too still and stifling.

He draws a careful grid, then plots each set of dots on these axes, revealing the shape of a set of low hills, a river tracing through them, a shallow valley like the dip of his palm. He recognizes it, not from his books or Hamilton’s spells, but a real place. Virginia, overlooking the Potomac. Washington’s farm.

Cautiously, he traces a finger over the edges of it - why Washington didn’t just send him a map, he doesn’t know. There must be something more here, something not immediately evident. 

He turns again to the letter, fingers skimming over the fine loops of Washington’s hand. A few words stood out, points that he’d calculated and sketched on the map but that did not seem to align with others. A word, sanguine, too fine for Washington’s normal correspondence. Hope, and blood. 

The servants have taken his knives, perhaps on Adrienne’s instructions, given his mental state. He rummages through his desk, revealing nothing more than a book knife, barely sharp enough to pull apart pages. 

He needs a blade - his shaving kit. He retrieves it from the bottom of his trunk, running a hand over his face. His beard has grown in, his hair wild and defying its queue, and he must look the maniac, tossing artifacts from the war onto the carpet until he finds the kit. He re-edges the blade on leather, a few swipes, and then deems it good enough, pricking the edge of his thumb experimentally and watching blood well up. 

He takes a long inhale and then brings the razor across the meat of his palm, too quick for it to hurt at first, staring at the rise of blood. A few drops on the map scatter on the map, though nothing happens. 

The tiny ink hillocks remaining static, the outline of the river unmoving. He squeezes his hand, which throbs now in time with the beat of his pulse, dispensing more blood. He wonders how much is necessary - considers for a second drawing the blade on his wrists, the oblivion that he could find there. A few quick cuts and then the release of endless sleep. An end to his troubles. 

Another splash of blood across the map, enough to drip in a line from hilltop to valley. Nothing moves. He feels foolish - he should bind his hand, should send for a servant to fetch fresh linens. Should call for his carriage to bounce him across the rutted streets of Paris and to the summer house, to the solace of Adrienne’s arms and the sanity that fresh air might bring -

One line moves. A little twitch of a thing. Perhaps his eye moving across the page, and nothing more. But then another moves, thrums even, ink like a pulse of blood in him, and more lines are moving, in concert now, to the same rhythm. 

There’s a tug in his belly, a force that seemingly pulls him forward, and he reaches out to steady himself, bloody hand on the map. The light seems to narrow, the walls of his room closing around him, and he tumbles forward not just onto the table but _through_ the map.

 

It’s morning when he wakes, sun rising, light thin. It’s cool, but the kind of cool that says the day itself will be hot, humidity already in the air. There’s the smell of wet dirt, of animals, of a farm, and -

“I see you received my letter, son.” Washington stands over him, looming, sun lighting him from behind. Peace has made him no less powerful-looking than war - he looks even more so, somehow, at ease in his civilian clothing. He reaches a hand down, which Lafayette takes.

“How did you know that I … ” Lafayette asks.

Washington’s smile is gentle. “We are connected by blood now. By blood and by magic.” He turns and begins to walk quickly, motioning for Lafayette to follow. He does. 

Washington’s farm is beautiful in the early morning, redolent with the smells of the countryside, fresh earth, clipped grass, a high bright set of things that remind Lafayette of Auvergne in the summer. It is too late in the season for flowers, and too early for harvest, and so there seems to be endless green around him. America, new and verdant. 

They walk quickly, Washington leading him across the fallow field he’d woken in, and up a small rise that overlooks a broader valley. The morning sun burns off mist, and Lafayette feels clear-headed in a way he couldn’t seem to in Paris, like the sunlight has evaporated his anxieties as well. 

Washington pauses here. 

“It’s lovely,” Lafayette says, because it is. 

“Yes,” Washington says. “I am loath to leave here again.”

“You sound as if you are already gone, sir.”

“There are calls for a new constitution, one stronger than these weak articles that baste us together presently. I fear I must serve a while longer.” 

“You do not wish to go,” Lafayette asks.

“No,” Washington says. “But go I must. Peace, I fear, will be harder than war.”

Lafayette thinks of the hard cold winter in Valley Forge. Of the bloody footprints across the snow, the cries of dying men for water, for their mothers. “I did not think there could be such things.” 

Perhaps whatever bond he and Washington share has given Washington similar thoughts - or perhaps his face is easy to read. 

“Death is easy, son,” Washington says, laying a hand across Lafayette’s shoulder. “It is easy to say you will lay down your life. Harder to live your life carrying the burden of duty.”

“But we must,” Lafayette says.

“No,” Washington says. “We need not. I could remain here, a farmer. You could stay among the courtiers in Paris, live your days in softness and safety.”

“I could not,” Lafayette says, defiant.

“No, son,” Washington says, and he’s smiling now. “You would not. Any more than Hamilton will stop writing. That’s what makes it a sacrifice.”

“Oh,” Lafayette says, and it’s like the breath has been knocked from him. He sits on the grass, and after a moment, Washington sits with him, arm extending across Lafayette’s back. He tips his head onto Washington’s shoulder. 

They watch the sun climb in the sky, a few clouds tracing their way across the horizon. Soon, the rest of the valley wakes, and there is smoke from the chimneys in the great house, from the smaller cottages beyond that. 

“I did not need blood magic to know you were troubled,” Washington says, after a while. He withdraws his hand from Lafayette’s shoulder, leans back, digging his hands into the grass, as if hanging on. “Hamilton is similarly troubled.” 

He doesn’t mention Laurens - news of his death had reached Lafayette, Hamilton’s shock and sadness evident in his brief letter. Still, his memory hangs over them. 

“Sometimes the veil feels thinner here,” Washington says. “The space between this world and the next almost navigable. Hamilton - grief is a powerful thing.”

“He tried to go after Laurens,” Lafayette says.

“Yes,” Washington says. 

“And you stopped him.” 

“Yes.” The sun dims for a minute, and Washington is briefly shadowed, lines around his eyes and mouth more visible. He turns his hand over. There’s a freshly healed cut on his palm, still red and tender. Lafayette wonders how much blood Washington will be required to shed for them. 

He reaches for Washington’s hand, cradling it in his own. “You are afraid I will do something similar.”

“I have lost one son in the war, and almost lost another,” Washington says. “I do not wish to lose any more.” 

“Sir,” Lafayette says, but finds his own voice thick, a sudden tightness in his chest. He leans and presses his mouth to the cut, hoping his actions can express what he cannot find the words to. 

“Promise me,” Washington says, and his voice is similarly strained. “If you find this world too heavy - promise me, you will remain. You will live to fight another day.”

“Yes,” Lafayette says. “ _Yes_.”

“Son -” And Washington’s voice breaks, enough that Lafayette can do little more than wrap his arms around Washington, than sit and watch the sun brighten the wide valley that Washington calls home. 

Time passes, enough that the day has grown almost hot. There are people in the fields now, tilling earth, others pushing carts, tiny figures performing the rituals of farming. Lafayette wonders at the space here, the variety of buildings, some surely for curing tobacco, a mill at the edge of a stream, storehouses that will hold harvest for market or for winter. 

After a while, Lafayette withdraws his arms from Washington, and stands, offering a hand up. “Come,” he says. “Show me your farm.”

 

He returns again, by map, to toast to the Constitution. To tell Washington of his delight in his children. To stand as a specter beside Washington at his inauguration. To see Hamilton’s new bank. To see them break ground in a city that will bear Washington’s name.

(He returns, covered in blood not his own, from where the streets of Paris run with it, to tell Washington of revolution turned to terror.)

They imprison him as he tries to escape, a cell where food is scarce and companionship even scarcer. They permit him a quill but no ink or paper, telling him to write in his own blood as if it is some great joke. 

He does, on the walls and floor, again and again, a map he knows like he knows his own name, the familiar hills and slopes of Mount Vernon. His body is trapped, but his spirit walks, and he raises a glass of the fetid water they bring him to toast the freedom they can never take away. 

Some nights, he returns and walks, over the rolling hills, to into the wide fields, falling asleep again under the stars and waking in his cell again. It become its own punishment, to taste freedom but never achieve it, but he does not stop. 

Later, they transfer him to Adrienne and his girls - house arrest, they call it, though it seems heaven compared with the solitude he’d suffered. He must look a ghost, because Adrienne cries when she first sees him, at his thin limbs and fragile hair. 

“My love,” she says, her hands gentle as she untangles what little remains on his scalp. “I fear we will never leave here. Or we will in caskets. Or worse.”

They have permitted him a razor, to shave his face or perhaps, they hope, slit his wrists. Instead, he traces the familiar lines of his map, and reopens the familiar cut on his hand, and says, “My dear, we are not trapped so long as we are together.” They fall through the map hand in hand.

He returns years later - a lifetime, several lifetimes - time enough that Washington is dead and buried, and Hamilton, and Adrienne; enough to see a great nation rise from 13 colonies to 24 states. He visits every one of them, collecting a jarful of earth from each. 

Great crowds greet him. There are parades and marches, magic crackling around them, the magic of cities, a new kind of spell manifested not from pages but forged in factories and spun in mills. (And, planted, he thinks, regretfully, by the labors of slaves.) America, great, teeming, and unfinished, as terrible and wonderful as ever.

The boat carrying his preciously collected dirt sinks, a sacrifice to the great muddy Ohio. Instead, they bring dirt from Bunker Hill, enough soil to bury him. Consecrated earth, watered with the blood of revolution. He hopes it’s enough to keep his soul from wandering, to keep him tethered to his body, near his Adrienne, at once in France and in America, his loves. A hero of two worlds, they call him.


End file.
